Tag Archives: UTEP

Oy Vey! This weekend of college football will be like buttah! And that’s enough Saturday Night Live reminiscing, because I’m just tired of that show anyway. We still have college football, but no football feedings again. I’ll be doing my darndest to watch but there may be gaps. Guptah!

It’s not as goofy as you think. But there are some teams this week looking to bounce back after some tough losses in there last game and they gotta stay focused. You can’t look away from the wood whilst you chop it, you have keep on it and keep chopping. So this week’s Pick It And Stick It will sharpen that axe for Week 4. Let’s do this. Continue reading Pick It And Stick It: Gotta Chop That Wood→

Hey it’s another year of football for Kansas State and it’s a weird time to be a fan. Usually Kansas State comes in underpicked, underestimated, and just generally dumped on. Welp this year is different. The Wildcats ended the year strong with an even stronger win over Michigan in the bowl game. Now all of the sudden the pundits and spineless sports media are picking Kansas State to finish well.

It’s a weird feeling. If any fan, and team, watches and plays better with a chip on their shoulder, it’s Kansas State. So now it’s time to act like we’ve been there. Yes, we have, but that added extra juice of being the underdog is gone. What’s a K-Stater to do? I guess the best thing is to do what got you to this point.

For us fans, that means cheering loud and staying proud. Pretty easy. For the football team, that means Jake Waters tossing bombs to Tyler Lockett. That’s pretty easy, too, actually. It helps that there’s this sexy stats the pundits refer to that each returning Wildcat quarterback leads the team to 11 wins (minus the early Snyder teams). So Jake Waters has that going for him.

You know what else he has going for him? Collin Klein. No no, he’s not playing for the team again, he’s COACHING them. While you can’t teach those kind of running instincts, Collin Klein can at least give direction. And that’s exactly what he’s doing with Jake Waters. Dark horse Heisman right there. I expect Jake Waters to do great, great things this year. More so than Tyler Lockett, although he’s right up there.

The offense sort of has questions elsewhere. There’s a decent group of wide receivers coming back, even though Daniel Sams took off after losing the quarterback job. The running back situation will be a committee until someone shows up. I hope its fast. There’s a polarized set of experience on the offense line and I hope they gel fast too.

I’m not sure what’s up on defense. Ryan Mueller is the man on the defense line (and former St. Thomas Aquinas alum, like me). That’s about all I know. There’s a couple of JUCO transfers that will help out immediately and we’ll have to see what the team looks like when they take the field today. Chances are, they will be fundamentally sound but not the biggest and fasted. Just like the last couple of years.

So speaking of games, how do I see the Wildcats this year? After last year’s fist game turd, I expect them to punch the ball in quicker and grow a bigger lead in the first half against Stephen F. Austin and then let up on the peddle a bit. They won’t be vanilla the whole game. Not with what’s coming up next.

Right after that, it’s a brutal stretch. Farmageddon is next, then Auburn. Iowa State will be better on the offensive side of the ball now that they got Mark Mangino as the offensive coordinator. And it’s on the road. Even though it wasn’t close last year, it will be this year. Kansas State will win.

Auburn is the big tomato. At least it’s in Manhattan. I get the feel from Tigers fans that they are scared about this one. They should be. But for some reason, all of the hype surrounding Kansas State this year has at least alerted them to the danger that is the Wildcats. Which means the team will be ready. Will Kansas State be ready? Yes. Will they lose? Unfortunately, yes.

So what does the rest of the schedule look like? Let’s run it down. They come back down to Earth and beat up UTEP. Texas Tech is in Manhattan so that’s a Wildcat victory. That Oklahoma game is a toss up because they are getting overrated too. I’m going with a loss there. They will beat Texas and Oklahoma State in Manhattan. They will beat TCU and West Virginia on the road. They will roll Kansas.

So that leaves Baylor. On the road. Hey guess what? I’m going to the game! New stadium. Last game of the year. Will it be for the Big 12 title? I sure hope so. My guess is that it will have huge implications on the Big 12 title. That’s good enough for me. Because I just don’t think Kansas State can keep up with Baylor.

Which means I’m pretty much going chalk this year. Weak, isn’t it? That’s what happens when the hype matches where I actually think the team will be, which is about 3rd in the conference with 3 losses. Now what bowl game that will be, I don’t know. I hope it’s close to Austin so I can finally see the Wildcats in a bowl. But until then, I’ll keep cheering loud and staying proud. Go Wildcats!

Ho man, finally we get into the meat of college football. Last week, it was trap time. Now it’s the real deal. I can’t keep my homer-ism down. I’m full tilt on Kansas State vs Oklahoma this weekend. And what’s about to launch me out of my chair is that we are also treated to Notre Dame vs Michigan. It’s a shame they are on at the same time. Yup, it’s gonna to be a massive weekend and I’ll try to pick and stick my way through it. Continue reading Pick It And Stick It: Sensory Overload Weekend→

Hey I’m back this week and I bought another copy of Phil Steele’s College Footbal Preview for 2012. Click through to find out why! I also talk about Charlie Weis, Kansas, Kansas State, North Dakota, North Dakota State, Tom Osborne, Big 12, BCS, UTEP, ESPN, and a whiny Bob Stoops.

Usually you can get away with picking a safe bet for the college football Pick It and Stick It. But sometimes, you need to go out on a limb and pick an upset. More often than not, you will be wrong but taking chances is what it’s all about for picks and college football. Look at Texas A&M. They made it official over the weekend and will take a chance in the SEC. Whether or not it will pay off will be another story, but the Aggies are taking the chance of not winning in the SEC for the stability and money the conference provides. So for them, it will pay off either in money or football field greatness. Let’s look at the Picks:

So there isn’t much change yet. Again we have the 3 dropped point weeks in play here. I guess I didn’t think of it before, but usually the beginning of the football season sees more teams playing and more top 25 teams playing scrubs. Now that it’s getting into conference play, there will be more top 25 teams playing each other. So while there will be dropped points in the coming weeks, the first three weeks seem to be more important than not now. We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out later in the year.

Shame on Pay for Play for picking Miami against Kansas State. Shame on everyone else except Bryce Brown for Heisman for picking Notre Dame to beat the spread against Pittsburgh. What was that about safe bets? Bryce Brown for Heisman won out the week for his mix of safe and unsafe bets, like the UTEP pick. I came in second along with TCU Travel for the same type of pick mixes. For me it was that Kansas State pick as well as going with Missouri for that ridiculous 21.5 spread against Oklahoma. TCU Travel Agent made his bones by going with Marshall and Western Michigan. It will be interesting toward the end with the true winners mixing it up like we did for this week.

Whew! Another close one for the Big 12. I swear, the Big 12 is the greatest thing since MTV’s The Real World. If you want to talk about the best conferences, then the one with the best drama factor definitely is the Big 12. Yeah, they are staying together but we really don’t know for how long. So while they hold hands again and tell everybody that things are cool, let’s focus on some actual football. This week’s Pick It an Stick It kind of reflects the noise off the field. Like the Big 12, most of the great games are stuck together around 2:30 Saturday. That’s fine for me and my barspotting trip, but how will it fare for the picks? Continue reading Pick It And Stick It 2011 Week 04: Sticking Together→

Alrighty welp I’m back for another week of actual Barspotting. Kansas City was nice and all but I’ve been to all the good bars up there and now I’m ready to hit (or find) the good bars down here in Austin. This week I’m going to try to get to Third Base. Hopefully, I can play my cards right and get there to brag about it all to you on Monday morning. From the looks of things it’s a hot spot to be at so I know it’ll be crowded with others when I get there. Come on and join me!

This week’s Mascot Monday brings us back down to Texas as we take a look at Conference USA’s UTEP Miners and their foam faced fella, Paydirt Pete. The UTEP mascot’s been going through some changes but the latest iteration brought some success. We’ll take a look at that as well as UTEP’s somewhat up and down football program. I’m getting back into the mascot swing of things and digging deep into Paydirt Pete will show it. Don’t take that out of context, however.

Come on in, sit down, and let’s do some pre-bowling. We’ve got a couple of more days for the string for bowls start up and we get a taste of bowls Saturday with three games. Oh, you don’t know what pre-bowling is? It’s kind of like pre-drinking. Wait, you don’t know what that is? Those of you who’ve been to college know what I’m talking about. Pre-drinking is when you bust open some beer and drink away before going out. It does two things: 1) Save you some extra cash by not spending it at the bars as much, and 2) get you a little buzzed before going all out. So let’s catch a bowl buzz and check out who’s playing Saturday.

Rainy falls days make for some great college football talk. This is the time of year when snow and rain play more into games on Saturday. I talked about football weather before, but for some reason Kansas City has yet to see any kind of weather until now. Maybe that makes up for the massive blast of cold and snow from last year. Whatever it is, look for more slipping and sliding on the fields Saturday. Also, look for more a slipping and a sliding on the picks this week. We have about 30 games to chose from so confidence will play in heavily.

Western Europe meets the western Kansas City area as we trucked way the heck out to Shawnee to view Saturday’s selections at J. Murphy’s Irish Pub and Grille. The games lined up for the afternoon seemed like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The traditional fare sprinkled the joint so well we were waiting for a Contra Dance to bust out. And the food, well the food was all it was cracked up to be, Irish wise. But there was so much more than really cheesy Irish references (which we will stop as of now) at J. Murphy’s.

This week’s barspot brings a suburban locale. Usually in suburbs around this time, you smell the freshly mown lawns and the first scents of fall. You even hear the birds chirping. In that spirit, we will watch the action at Birdie’s Pub. Um let’s see here. Another way to think of this place is that we are going to a golf players fantasy sports bar. So while we see the golf season wind down, we can see the college football season pick up. Okay, now we’re just blabbing on. We really don’t know what’s in this place because we’ve never been there before. Hopefully, the local crowd won’t chirp to much while watching the games. We also hope that Birdie’s does better than par for the barspotting course. Now bring on the beer cart babes.

Notes: Alrighty some of the better games are happening tonight and tomorrow. The Georgia Tech and Miami game should be good but we’re not sure if a fight will break out or not. We know the Battle for the Milk Can can be rough and it’s up to Fresno State to spoil Boise States frothy pour toward BCS busting run. The Governor’s Cup is up for grabs when Louisville heads to Kentucky. Too bad both programs are a little blah right now. Kansas will handle Duke better than the basketball contest. The O-Rourke-McFadden Trophy (a leather helmet) is what Boston College and Clemson will be shooting for Saturday. The Trophy first showed up just last year. Missouri will roll. Florida will take out its frustrations on Lane Kiffin’s smack talk against his Tennessee team. In what will be the game of the week, we will see two great defenses pound on each other with Nebraska going to Blacksburg to take on Virginia Tech. Due to a scheduling difference, Texas Tech agreed to play Texas this weekend. For us it means an early treat and a revenge game for the Longhorns’ Colt McCoy. UTEP and New Mexico State ride the Battle of I-10 to vie for the Silver Spade. Finally we get Kansas State heading to UCLA. So the starting QB is out with a broken jaw and 4 other players are suspended from UCLA for this game. I still think this game has home victory written all over it.